Intel’s Haswell CPUs will fit in everything from tablets to servers

An improved GPU and lower power consumption make for a versatile chip.

Information about Intel's next-generation processor architecture, codenamed Haswell, has been leaking steadily for some time, but presentations at today's Intel Developer Forum (IDF) are finally giving us details on what to expect from the fourth-generation Core processors when they launch in 2013.

Haswell is a "tock", in Intel parlance—a completely new processor architecture manufactured using the same 22nm process and "3D" tri-gate transistors as Ivy Bridge. As with Ivy Bridge, the bulk of Intel's attentions are focused on improving graphics performance and reducing power consumption—while Haswell's optimizations will definitely make it faster than Ivy Bridge at the same clock speeds, CPU performance definitely took a back seat during Intel's Haswell-oriented keynote today.

The CPU: modest improvements in a power-efficient package

Much about Haswell's architecture is similar to Ivy Bridge in many ways: key technologies like Turbo Boost and Hyperthreading are still in play, and the instruction pipeline and L1 and L2 cache sizes remain the same.

Haswell gains its speed mostly from tweaks to existing technologies: a new version of the Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), predictably named AVX2, potentially doubles the theoretical floating point performance over the Sandy and Ivy Bridge architecture due to the long-awaited addition of a fused multiply-add instruction, and the bandwidth of both the L1 and L2 caches have been increased to accommodate the new extensions; two more ports have been added to the processor's Unified Reservation Station, allowing for the execution of up to eight operations per clock cycle (up from six in Sandy and Ivy Bridge); and branch prediction and the out-of-order execution units have also been improved.

While we don't have any hard performance numbers for Haswell just yet, these improvements (along with current rumors) suggest a CPU that is faster than Ivy Bridge, but not staggeringly so. The Haswell platform as a whole is also meant to reduce power consumption significantly—Intel has said that laptops using Haswell and its associated chipset could see up to double the battery life over Ivy Bridge. The biggest factor here is the introduction of a new power state, which Intel calls "S0ix."

Ivy Bridge-based systems are either active (in the S0 state) or in sleep or Hibernate modes (the S3 and S4 states). The S0ix power state splits the difference, keeping the system active but using only five percent as much power as Sandy Bridge systems do while idling—the benefit over the S3 and S4 states is that going from the S0ix state back to an active state is instantaneous and seamless to the user. Haswell can also switch between these power states more quickly than previous platforms, wasting less power while transitioning.

The desire to save power extends beyond the CPU itself—Intel has also added support for several low-power interfaces normally associated with ARM-toting tablets, including I2C, SDIO, I2S, and UART, along with more traditional SATA, USB, and PCI Express interfaces. All of these improvements, along with system-on-a-chip (SoC) versions of Haswell with a TDP of just 10W (down from the 17W in Ivy Bridge processors), should enable Intel to put Ultrabook-class performance into tablets with similar size, weight, and battery life to today's ARM-based offerings.

GPU performance: Big increases, if you pick the right chip

In Ivy Bridge, improvements to graphics performance were much more noteworthy than improvements to CPU performance, and that song remains the same with Haswell, which is supposed to be about twice as fast as the Intel HD 4000 in Ivy Bridge depending on the chip you get (which we'll discuss more in a moment). Intel has achieved this mostly by adding more hardware to the GPU—the actual architecture is similar to Ivy Bridge, which itself was an improved version of the Sandy Bridge graphics chip. Intel's next next-generation processor, codenamed Broadwell, is slated to introduce a revamped GPU architecture, which should bring even further gains.

The integrated graphics processors in Sandy and Ivy Bridge came in two flavors: the more powerful GT2, which you know as the Intel HD 3000 and HD 4000 graphics processors, and the cut-down GT1, which came in the form of the HD 2000 and HD 2500. The high- and low-end GPUs from each generation are architecturally the same—each supports the same video decoding features, DirectX and OpenGL versions, and number of displays—but the higher-end GPUs have more of Intel's "execution units" (EUs) on board. The HD 4000 had 16 EUs to the HD 2500's six.

We don't know the exact number of the EUs in either GT1 or GT2 in Haswell, but we do know a bit about their features and general performance level: the new GPUs will support DirectX 11.1, OpenCL 1.2, and OpenGL 4.0, and should perform similarly to Ivy Bridge while using about half the power.

Enlarge/ Haswell will double your graphics performance, but only if you pick the right GPU.

Intel

The performance increases come in a new performance level unique to Haswell, called GT3—this chip will essentially double the number of EUs found in the GT2 part, delivering about twice the graphics performance using the same amount of power as the Intel HD 4000. The performance implications are clear: AnandTech has posted a video from the IDF floor that shows GT3 running Skyrim on High settings at 1920x1080. Next to it is a current laptop with Intel's HD 4000 GPU running the same game at the same (apparent) framerate, but at a lower 1366x768 resolution and Medium settings. That's quite an exciting bump, especially if you want a thin-and-light Ultrabook that can game—the GPU also supports up to 4K resolutions, which should make it a good match for laptops and tablets with high-density displays.

The downside of GT3 is that it further muddles the already bewildering segmentation of Intel's CPU portfolio: currently, all Ivy Bridge mobile CPUs use the Intel HD 4000, but the desktop CPUs use a confusing mix of the Intel HD 4000 and HD 2500 products; with Haswell, mobile chips and SoCs can come with either GT2 or GT3, introducing the confusion of the desktop side to the mobile chips. Customers hoping for the GPU improvements found in GT3 may be sorely disappointed if OEMs cheap out and use GT2-equipped CPUs in all of their machines.

Other noteworthy improvements to the GPU in Haswell include a dedicated Video Quality Engine, which can decode video without waking up the rest of the GPU, and the ability to ramp up GPU clock speeds without also ramping up CPU clock speeds. Like Ivy Bridge, the Haswell GPUs support three monitors as long as at least one of the outputs is a DisplayPort—you can't run three monitors using three HDMI or DVI ports or any combination of the two.

Conclusions

If Intel's upcoming Atom processors are getting serious about competing with Cortex A9 and A15-based ARM processors, then Haswell is about giving us tablets in a whole new class of performance—benchmarks for Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks are five or six times higher than they are for the quad-core Tegra 3 in the Nexus 7, just to pick an example. ARM is still superior from a power usage standpoint, since even at full-tilt ARM SoCs are still sipping power compared to x86 SoCs, but the option to have that kind of performance in a tablet would be mighty tempting to a lot of companies and consumers.

All of that is to say nothing of the advancements that Haswell will bring to laptops and Ultrabooks, which stand to gain both better battery life and integrated graphics that you'd actually want to use for gaming; to desktops, which will be both more power-efficient and powerful than before; and to servers, which of course stand to benefit from all the power and performance enhancements of the consumer devices. Intel's confusing portfolio aside, Haswell looks like another solid incremental improvement on what came before.

Intel is taking a "mobile first" approach to Haswell's launch, which means that laptops and tablets should be the first devices to see these processors when they launch in early 2013.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites

84 Reader Comments

If Haswell can really run modern games at 1080p on high settings, I'd be glad to get the hot, noisy dedicated GPUs out of my rigs.

The only problem might be lack of upgradability - you'd have to get a new CPU, motherboard, and perhaps RAM once the graphics can't keep up, instead of dropping in a new GPU with minimal fuss while keeping everything else the same.

Lots of interesting information. It sounds to me like some of the benefits of 22 nm finFETs weren't really used until Haswell, which may help explain the 20x reduction in idle power they're claiming. (A purely architectural change shouldn't bring such massive power consumption benefits without drastically reducing transistor count, maybe it wouldn't have been possible to effectively wake up and put to sleep portions of the processor quickly enough on older processes to make something like this viable.)

The big drawcard for me in this is that the whole transformer/hybrid idea - a tablet that is docked into a keyboard, or even into a full desktop setup - is only realistic if the machine has the guts for desktop productivity as well as mobile battery life. I will probably be buying a desktop IB PC next, but I would LOVE for such hybrids to finally be fully realised.

"The performance increases come in a new performance level unique to Haswell, called GT3—this chip will essentially double the number of EUs found in the GT2 part, delivering about twice the graphics performance using the same amount of power as the Intel HD 4000. "

Seems too good to be true considering the process is still at 22nm. DOUBLE the GPU performance at the SAME power usage while CPU performance will be only slightly faster. I'll believe DOUBLE the performance because of the fact that there are DOUBLE the number of EU's, but at the SAME POWER draw... that's hard to swallow, especially since the HD4000 graphics is competitive with the on-board AMD graphics already.

The only problem might be lack of upgradability - you'd have to get a new CPU, motherboard, and perhaps RAM once the graphics can't keep up, instead of dropping in a new GPU with minimal fuss while keeping everything else the same.

But how many PC users here just do that anyway?

Can't think of any time in the past where I've upgraded only the processor, ram, or the motherboard back in my PC hay-day.

Even with my Mac Pro when I upgraded my graphics card awhile back, I just *had* to put in additional ram at the same time.

I suppose my point is that it's replace everything anyway after a couple year lifecycle.

Dammit, and here I was, having already decided what my next laptop purchase was going to be. Then again, I am skeptical about GT3's performance claims.The Anandtech video looks interesting, but more details about the whole setup would be nice to hear.

jimmy43: according to NotebookCheck's GPU benchmark charts, the HD4000 is slightly below the 330M. If GT3 was indeed able to double the performance, then maybe it could reach 640M LE levels (just looking cards with benchmark numbers twice as big). Seems overreaching, but who knows.

Intel really seems to be doing good things lately. Haswell sounds like an exciting chip. I'm all for lower power consumption so long as it still provides a good user experience. I had my doubts that Intel was going to be able to drop the power demands of x86, but Haswell looks like a huge step in the right direction.

I'm also excited about the updated Atom, with OoO and HD graphics inside. Thanks for keeping things interesting, Intel.

Dammit, and here I was, having already decided what my next laptop purchase was going to be. Then again, I am skeptical about GT3's performance claims.The Anandtech video looks interesting, but more details about the whole setup would be nice to hear.

jimmy43: according to NotebookCheck's GPU benchmark charts, the HD4000 is slightly below the 330M. If GT3 was indeed able to double the performance, then maybe it could reach 640M LE levels (just looking cards with benchmark numbers twice as big). Seems overreaching, but who knows.

Yeah Intel's performance and power claims are probably overly rosy, but I'm willing to withhold judgment until we can actually get a Haswell system in for testing. They delivered pretty well on their promises for Ivy Bridge, though...

Lots of interesting information. It sounds to me like some of the benefits of 22 nm finFETs weren't really used until Haswell, which may help explain the 20x reduction in idle power they're claiming. (A purely architectural change shouldn't bring such massive power consumption benefits without drastically reducing transistor count, maybe it wouldn't have been possible to effectively wake up and put to sleep portions of the processor quickly enough on older processes to make something like this viable.)

Thanks for that - I'll switch out the current pictures for the actual slides.

I'm not sure I would call these improvements incremental. I'm seeing lots of good new shit packed into a small power envelope. Out of curiosity, what would you consider to be a feasible non-incremental improvement?

I'm not sure I would call these improvements incremental. I'm seeing lots of good new shit packed into a small power envelope. Out of curiosity, what would you consider to be a feasible non-incremental improvement?

Everything is incremental, really. They're x86 CPUs that are slightly faster and more efficient than the versions that came before, just like Ivy Bridge, and Sandy Bridge, and so on—I'd say mainstream dual- and quad-core processors were probably the last really big changes to x86 CPUs. The SoCs might be the same sort of thing, but they need to show up in real products first. :-)

The only problem might be lack of upgradability - you'd have to get a new CPU, motherboard, and perhaps RAM once the graphics can't keep up, instead of dropping in a new GPU with minimal fuss while keeping everything else the same.

But how many PC users here just do that anyway?

Can't think of any time in the past where I've upgraded only the processor, ram, or the motherboard back in my PC hay-day.

Even with my Mac Pro when I upgraded my graphics card awhile back, I just *had* to put in additional ram at the same time.

I suppose my point is that it's replace everything anyway after a couple year lifecycle.

I think you misunderstood my post - the GPU is still the weakest link in Haswell, by far. And when that becomes inadequate, well never mind, you can add a dedicated GPU so I guess nothing really has changed.

The only problem might be lack of upgradability - you'd have to get a new CPU, motherboard, and perhaps RAM once the graphics can't keep up, instead of dropping in a new GPU with minimal fuss while keeping everything else the same.

But how many PC users here just do that anyway?

Can't think of any time in the past where I've upgraded only the processor, ram, or the motherboard back in my PC hay-day.

Even with my Mac Pro when I upgraded my graphics card awhile back, I just *had* to put in additional ram at the same time.

I suppose my point is that it's replace everything anyway after a couple year lifecycle.

I think you misunderstood my post - the GPU is still the weakest link in Haswell, by far. And when that becomes inadequate, well never mind, you can add a dedicated GPU so I guess nothing really has changed.

There's still plenty of reasons to want to have that Intel GPU even if you're loaded up with a high-end gaming GPU. If anything it's an always-available back up in case of hardware failure (or having to make incremental purchases on a new PC). There's also some nice GPU-based features that do stuff like accelerate transcoding of video. It's not as fast as OpenCL-based transcoding on a monster GPU, but it being put into so many computers by default means the extensions will be a mainstream item instead of specially-made high-end transcoders.

The only problem might be lack of upgradability - you'd have to get a new CPU, motherboard, and perhaps RAM once the graphics can't keep up, instead of dropping in a new GPU with minimal fuss while keeping everything else the same.

But how many PC users here just do that anyway?

Can't think of any time in the past where I've upgraded only the processor, ram, or the motherboard back in my PC hay-day.

Even with my Mac Pro when I upgraded my graphics card awhile back, I just *had* to put in additional ram at the same time.

I suppose my point is that it's replace everything anyway after a couple year lifecycle.

I think you misunderstood my post - the GPU is still the weakest link in Haswell, by far. And when that becomes inadequate, well never mind, you can add a dedicated GPU so I guess nothing really has changed.

There's still plenty of reasons to want to have that Intel GPU even if you're loaded up with a high-end gaming GPU. If anything it's an always-available back up in case of hardware failure (or having to make incremental purchases on a new PC). There's also some nice GPU-based features that do stuff like accelerate transcoding of video. It's not as fast as OpenCL-based transcoding on a monster GPU, but it being put into so many computers by default means the extensions will be a mainstream item instead of specially-made high-end transcoders.

Haswell has been estimated at 10W, current ULV i5s are around 15W. A Tegra 3 is 4W. At a performance delta of 5-10x performance, the math is clearly in Haswell's favor for performance per Watt... roughly 1.5-2x the raw number crunching per Watt in fact. I've tried to point out such disparities before each time the silliness of an ARM based cluster server is brought up.

With the new idle states, this puts Haswell as vastly superior to ARM for all but the smallest / weakest tablets. Current tablets have batteries in excess of 40 Wh (iPad 3) which is the same range as Ultrabooks (35-60 Wh). At this point, the other major battery drain is the LCD, which tablets have lower usage (even an 11" MBA is substantially larger than a 10.1" tablet in screen area to be lit).

I have a feeling MS Surface will be using Haswell given their timetable for release. This could easily translate to somewhere in the 7-10 hour lifespan in normal use with a 40+ Wh battery plus the enhanced idle states.

Haswell has been estimated at 10W, current ULV i5s are around 15W. A Tegra 3 is 4W. At a performance delta of 5-10x performance, the math is clearly in Haswell's favor for performance per Watt... roughly 1.5-2x the raw number crunching per Watt in fact. I've tried to point out such disparities before each time the silliness of an ARM based cluster server is brought up.

With the new idle states, this puts Haswell as vastly superior to ARM for all but the smallest / weakest tablets. Current tablets have batteries in excess of 40 Wh (iPad 3) which is the same range as Ultrabooks (35-60 Wh). At this point, the other major battery drain is the LCD, which tablets have lower usage (even an 11" MBA is substantially larger than a 10.1" tablet in screen area to be lit).

I have a feeling MS Surface will be using Haswell given their timetable for release. This could easily translate to somewhere in the 7-10 hour lifespan in normal use with a 40+ Wh battery plus the enhanced idle states.

Agreed, though your numbers are a little off. Under load IVB ULV parts draw between 17W and 19W, plus another 3-4W for the PCH. If they hit 10W for the leaked MCP(CPU+PCH), we're talking a honest 50% reduction in active silicon power.

I think you're going to be disappointed re: Surface and Haswell. Surface Pro announced availability(Jan-Feb) is 3-4 months before Haswell ULV is expected(June).

Intel, did announce a limited availability 10W IVB part for early next year, that I think would be a good match for Surface Pro.

There's still plenty of reasons to want to have that Intel GPU even if you're loaded up with a high-end gaming GPU. If anything it's an always-available back up in case of hardware failure (or having to make incremental purchases on a new PC). There's also some nice GPU-based features that do stuff like accelerate transcoding of video. It's not as fast as OpenCL-based transcoding on a monster GPU

What's the state of drivers for these in the *nix ecosystem? For example, I'd love to see easier access to the OpenCL compute elements for scientific computing. As it stands (AFAIK), these are accessed through custom drivers that have come slowly to the non-MS world.

Further on that idea, I can think of a lot of cool everyday places/uses for dynamical systems simulations outside of scientific computing. I like to think that the world is currently being seeded with compute cores who's broad usefulness has yet to be appreciated. When that day comes, they'll be there ready and waiting...

If Haswell can really run modern games at 1080p on high settings, I'd be glad to get the hot, noisy dedicated GPUs out of my rigs.

The only problem might be lack of upgradability - you'd have to get a new CPU, motherboard, and perhaps RAM once the graphics can't keep up, instead of dropping in a new GPU with minimal fuss while keeping everything else the same.

Why can't you upgrade? If your desktop has haswell you can run that for a few years and then drop in a GPU when the integrated graphics aren't good enough anymore. Exactly like you can now.

Also modern GPUs don't have to be hot and noisy anymore. When you're not gaming, the 7970 only uses something like 15W to draw the screen. If the screen goes blank, the GPU will actually come to a full stop now (fan shuts off)

If Haswell can really run modern games at 1080p on high settings, I'd be glad to get the hot, noisy dedicated GPUs out of my rigs.

The only problem might be lack of upgradability - you'd have to get a new CPU, motherboard, and perhaps RAM once the graphics can't keep up, instead of dropping in a new GPU with minimal fuss while keeping everything else the same.

What's to stop one from using it while it's useful and only later dropping in a GPU? Nothing I can see.

I'm curious to see if AMD has anything planned in the near future to counter this. They already have CPUs with intergrated GPUs on them, but the CPU bit wasn't too great, if I recall correctly. The really awesome thing about the chip is you could drop in an AMD/ATi video card and run it in Crossfire mode with the intergrated GPU in the CPU.Honestly, I'm not sure if AMD have much life left in the CPU market. They absolutely need to pull off something before the next Intel release or they'll stand no chance, regardless of whether it's mobile or desktop processor.

"The performance increases come in a new performance level unique to Haswell, called GT3—this chip will essentially double the number of EUs found in the GT2 part, delivering about twice the graphics performance using the same amount of power as the Intel HD 4000. "

Seems too good to be true considering the process is still at 22nm. DOUBLE the GPU performance at the SAME power usage while CPU performance will be only slightly faster. I'll believe DOUBLE the performance because of the fact that there are DOUBLE the number of EU's, but at the SAME POWER draw... that's hard to swallow, especially since the HD4000 graphics is competitive with the on-board AMD graphics already.

If it's true, that's great news for everybody except nVidia and AMD.

You'd think having 2 FMAs per cycle (instead of 1) should be able to achieve that trick. And since we are talking about graphics processing here, there should be plenty of FMAs to compute

Agreed, though your numbers are a little off. Under load IVB ULV parts draw between 17W and 19W, plus another 3-4W for the PCH. If they hit 10W for the leaked MCP(CPU+PCH), we're talking a honest 50% reduction in active silicon power.

I think you're going to be disappointed re: Surface and Haswell. Surface Pro announced availability(Jan-Feb) is 3-4 months before Haswell ULV is expected(June).

Intel, did announce a limited availability 10W IVB part for early next year, that I think would be a good match for Surface Pro.

Thanks for the catch on the availability, for some reason I thought Haswell was much closer. Still, at that power dissipation, it's nearly time to ditch Atom for anything but embedded and smart phones, despite the fact that clock for clock it's faster than ARM. Too bad no new battery technologies are remotely close to leaving the lab. The density jumps from NiCd to NiMH to LiOn are gone. LiPo stuff helps to save weight, but not so much with volume. At least we've ditched round cells for the most part in high end devices.

btw, do you think that the delay in the surface might be to incorporate haswell into it (perhaps some special deal with intel)?

3+ months is a long time to wait for the x86 surface, and should be available in 2013 AFTER the christmas buying period. As Windows 8 should already be "available" during that time, why do you think microsoft is waiting with the surface?

The desire to save power extends beyond the CPU itself—Intel has also added support for several low-power interfaces normally associated with ARM-toting tablets, including I2C, SDIO, I2S, and UART, along with more traditional SATA, USB, and PCI Express interfaces

UART is also known as a "serial port", rather more "traditional" than SATA, USB or PCI-E! I2C is commonly seen in PCs as "SMBus", another very much legacy thing, while I2S is Yet Another Inter-Chip Audio Interface

Agreed, though your numbers are a little off. Under load IVB ULV parts draw between 17W and 19W, plus another 3-4W for the PCH. If they hit 10W for the leaked MCP(CPU+PCH), we're talking a honest 50% reduction in active silicon power.

I think you're going to be disappointed re: Surface and Haswell. Surface Pro announced availability(Jan-Feb) is 3-4 months before Haswell ULV is expected(June).

Intel, did announce a limited availability 10W IVB part for early next year, that I think would be a good match for Surface Pro.

Thanks for the catch on the availability, for some reason I thought Haswell was much closer. Still, at that power dissipation, it's nearly time to ditch Atom for anything but embedded and smart phones, despite the fact that clock for clock it's faster than ARM. Too bad no new battery technologies are remotely close to leaving the lab. The density jumps from NiCd to NiMH to LiOn are gone. LiPo stuff helps to save weight, but not so much with volume. At least we've ditched round cells for the most part in high end devices.

Don't count Atom out just yet. Not only is it still 1/2 to 1/3 the TDP of Core architecture chips, it's significantly less expensive($100-200).

btw, do you think that the delay in the surface might be to incorporate haswell into it (perhaps some special deal with intel)?

3+ months is a long time to wait for the x86 surface, and should be available in 2013 AFTER the christmas buying period. As Windows 8 should already be "available" during that time, why do you think microsoft is waiting with the surface?

First dibs on haswell could make it a must buy for many consumers

No, the launch schedules just don't line up. As I said, they might be one of the ones getting the LE 10W IVB parts, given the time frame and the limited quantities MS is expecting to sell.

Remember, transitioning form IVB to Haswell, isn't a simple CPU swap, especially in the ULV category, where the PCH is moved from the board onto the CPU package(though not the die).

I expect the 90 days is to give their OEMs some breathing room before competing in the x86 space. It's less of an issue for ARM based Windows tablets since MS is basically creating a new platform space, and controlling who gets to play there.